Throughout my working life, I've encountered people who made me think, "Kill me if I ever start acting and thinking that way." Generally these are people who are bitter and angry about their work, or who are so disengaged as to be practically dead. While I most notice those people who are aggressive about their career unhappiness, there are plenty of other people who simply disappear, I guess hoping to escape notice as their souls slowly shrivel up.  At times, I've felt myself start to go down that road of deep unhappiness and pessimism. I see mostly problems, not possibilities and I focus on the suck, not the awesome. When my snark quotient goes way up and I find myself complaining constantly, I know that an attitude change is in order.  As I continue on my journey to be more mindful and to engage in positive professional development, I find myself wanting to be more of a career inspiration, rather than a cautionary tale. I don't want people to walk away from interactions with me and think, "Please don't let me turn out that way. . . "  In that vein, these 18 Ways to Inspire Everyone Around You gave me some good food for thought. Some of my favorites: Be authentic and true to yourself. Express your enthusiasm. Care about people.  Make people feel good about themselves.  Articulate what everyone else is thinking.  Share lessons from your successes and failures. Help people heal--instead of judging people by their past, stand by them and help repair their future.  These aren't always easy for me to do, but I'm committed to the idea of being the inspiration I want to see in the world.  How do you inspire others? What has inspired you?  ______________________________________________________________________ Are you looking for a way to get support and more accountability in achieving your career goals? I'm running a bi-weekly Virtual Career Clarity Circle starting on February 27 that may be just what you need. Details and sign-up information are here. 

Last night I did an Image Center session with a friend who is going through my Getting Unstuck course. I had her do two images--one that shows where she is now and one that shows where she'd like to be.  Here's the image for where she is now: And here's the image for where she wants to be: It wasn't hard to figure out why she feels stuck. She has too much going on! That first image is just an explosion, radiating out from the explosion of fireworks in the middle. She's being pulled in 50 different directions and has a hard time putting focus into just a few of the most important places.  Working with my friend reminded me that being stuck comes in two different varieties and that it can be helpful to know which is your personal brand of "stuckness."  Diagnosing Your "Stuck" In my experience, there are two distinct types of "stuck"--the stuckness of the over-thinker and the stuckness of the over-doer.  Are You An Over-Thinker? The first type of stuck is the muddy slog of inertia that is the domain of the over-thinker. Often (but not always) these are the introverts who are naturally drawn to thinking before acting. When these people are stuck, it's because they are so busy worrying about making the "right" move, they make no moves at all. They are the perfectionists and the worriers, the people who need to do just one more piece of research or talk to just one more person before they feel comfortable making their next move. But somehow they never actually move. They are stuck in the reflection part of the Act/Reflect cycle.  Or Are You an Over-Doer?  The other version of "stuck" is where my friend is at. It's the obsessive do-er's type of stuck. These are often the more extroverted types who thrive on activity and being in the outer world.  In this brand of stuckness, I find people who are constantly moving, taking no time to reflect on what they are doing or why. Action is what counts and they have a hard time creating the space for reflection so that their actions are more intentional and in alignment with what they want. These people are stuck in the action part of Act/Reflect.  When you're stuck, it's helpful to try to figure out which camp you fall into because treating your stuckness will depend on whether you're an over-thinker or  an over-doer. Your stuckness is really an imbalance in the Act/Reflect cycle.  Treating Your "Stuck"  While both over-thinkers and over-doers can benefit from doing some de-cluttering, moving out of stuck is essentially a different process for each type. The over-thinkers need more action and the over-doers need more reflection.  Over-Thinkers If you're an over-thinker, then the way to get out of "stuck" is by bringing more action into your life. Over-thinkers need to make a commitment to just doing things, rather than thinking about doing something. And that action cannot be doing one more bit of research or asking one more person what you should do. It has to be action that is in alignment with your vision of where you want to go and that is designed to actually move you in that direction. You need to experiment with different identities and trust the mess that comes with action. You have to let go of the need to do things perfectly and just embrace doing anything at all.  Over-Doers Over-doers have a different task. You need to create space for yourself for more reflection so you can be more intentional about what you are doing and why you are doing it. You may need to start saying "no" more often and streamlining your life to make room for more thinking. Try incorporating some reflection rituals  to create a reflection habit. Your task is to put some real intention and focus behind your actions, rather than being caught in an endless loop of mindless activity that doesn't really go anywhere. Embrace your power to do, but put some mindfulness behind it.    Being "stuck" is really about imbalance--choosing either reflection or action at the expense of the other part of the cycle. To get unstuck,  you have to restore balance to the cycle of Act/Reflect. Knowing your own tendencies towards one or the other can help you quickly figure out how to get moving when you find yourself stuck in one place.   The next time you feel stuck, consider whether your stuckness is a result of over-thinking or over-doing and then look at what you can do to restore the balance.  ____________________________________________________________________ If you need help getting unstuck, you might want to try one of my Career Clarity Image Center session packages. We can explore what's keeping you stuck, where you want to go and how you can get there.   

As I dive ever deeper into the rabbit hole of what I call Positive Professional Development, I keep thinking about how to harness what's positive in our lives, rather than spending so much time with the negative. How do you increase the awesome?  Today I was reading this blog post on hopeful trends for 2012 and it got me thinking about how to build a career on hopeful trends--what would it look like if we did that?  A few ideas that came to mind. . .  Start (or Join) a Worker Co-Op--Worker co-ops are companies owned by their employees and we're seeing a rise in their numbers.  According to this article, "some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions." Engage in Social Enterprise--"A social enterprise is an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods. The social needs addressed by social enterprises and the business models they use are as diverse as human ingenuity. Social enterprises build a more just, sustainable world by applying market-based strategies to today's social problems." Think Local/Sustainable--This PBS documentary popped up in my Netflix recommendations the other night and it's a fantastic description of the kind of economy we could be building that focuses on creating vibrant local/sustainable communities. It transforms your sense of what's possible and how work coud fit into that. (As a side note, it also has great info on time-banking, which is a way for us to share our talents in a sort of barter arrangement. I love time-banking values, too. ) I know there must be more, but these are the three that come to mind for me.   What other hopeful trends can we look to for building our careers? 

Last week I wrote about how to diagnose and treat your career stuck. This morning I was catching up on my Google Reader and came across this article on 10 Psychnological Keys to Job Satisfaction that I think offers some additional information for our use.   First, here are the 10 keys: Little hassles Perception of fair pay Achievment Feedback Complexity and Variety Control Organizational Support Work/Home overflow Job "Honeymoons and Hangovers" How easily satisfied are you? To use them, I would suggest taking a look at your current career situation and getting a better understanding of how one or more of these factors may be playing into your job satisfaction. This can give you specific information to focus on in devising experiments to get yourself out of the stuck rut.  For example, in looking at your situation, you may find that you're dealing with a combination of minimal variety, a sense that you aren't really achieving anything that matters and a lack of control over your work and/or your work environment. Armed with this knowledge, you can start to look for experiments you might be able to run that will help you move in a more positive direction. This is where I think that the Total Leadership model can be very helpful.  Getting specific can also help you focus your experiments in the places likely to give you the most "bang for your buck." You can be more purposeful and intentional in your actions. This can go a long way toward getting rid of the stuck. 

This morning I ran across an excellent post by Penelope Trunk on New Ways to Find a New Job. She began with what I think is probably the most important piece of career advice I could ever give you: When you see someone who has a career you want, it’s a safe bet that they spent the majority of their career clearly defining themselves and then differentiating themselves from all the other people who defined themselves the same way. Self-knowledge is a huge career tool, but most people find it onerous and try to skip it. The problem with skipping over self-knowledge is that people hit a career ceiling, not because someone put it on top of them - we put it on top of ourselves by not knowing who we are. A few points here. . . .  First, most people see developing knowledge of themselves, their strengths, etc. as a difficult job that they'd rather avoid. Sometimes they want to avoid it because they just don't want to know the answers. But more often they see it as somehow "frivolous," less important than the tasks at hand. Knowing yourself is seen as so much navel-gazing when there's more important work to be done.  But as Penelope points out, when you skip the self-knowledge step, you run into all of these self-imposed limits. You try to do work for which you are not well-suited, to fit your round self into that square hole. Or you are completely unaware of the beliefs you have about yourself and your capacities, so you continually undershoot and let opportunities pass you by because you're afraid to own your awesomeness.   When I begin career counseling with people, I always start with the self-knowledge piece and find that most of the time, this is where people resist me the most. They want to start talking about what jobs interest them or what the market is looking for. They don't want to go inside and do the difficult work of figuring out what they have to offer and where their passions are.  The other piece that is important in what Penelope says is the idea that we have to differentiate ourselves from the thousands of other people who do what we do. We are all unique snowflakes, but the problem is we don't take the time to really look at the ways in which we are unique. We keep focusing on our snowflake qualities and all other people see is that we're snow, like everyone else.  It's only through doing the ongoing and arduous work of looking at who we REALLY are that we are able to appreciate, refine and put out into the world those qualities that make each of us different. We have to keep asking ourselves, "what is unique about how I do what I do? How can I build on that?"  Self-knowledge is a critical component of career and professional development, but it's something that most of us shy away from doing. Then we are disappointed when we do not progress in our careers as we'd like to.  If we want to find success, we have to be willing to take a good hard look at ourselves on a regular basis. Self-knowledge is the key to finding the right work and to making ourselves uniquely suited to do that work.  Are you ready to buckle down and know yourself? 

A blog post this morning by Walter McKenzie got me thinking about career behavior--more specifically do we approach people with a "what's in it for me?" mentality or do we look beyond transactions? Here's Walter's take on an experience he had recently: In terminal one at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, right across from Chili’s, is a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory shop, where they have a standing offer that you can buy three caramel apples and get a fourth one free. The apples are fresh and dipped daily and are a tempting treat, but for many solo travelers it’s not possible to grab four caramel apples and run easily. One traveler  ahead of me in line bought one caramel apple and ran off to his gate to catch his flight. Another bought the four caramel apples and offered three to the next three of us in line she didn’t even know, just so she could get hers free. We gladly took her up on her offer, and as she went on her way with our "thank yous" hanging in the air the traveler who had been standing right behind me commented what silliness it was for her to pay triple the price for the one apple she received. I walked off processing his cynical comment. Mathematically he was right, of course. As transactions go, she had paid for three but she was only enjoying one. In her mind, though, she had gotten a free caramel apple and showed a kindness to three fellow travelers in the process. I guess if you really wanted to be mathematically faithful to the buy-three-get-one-free offer, you could have sold the three extra apples to recoup your purchase price. But who has time in a busy airport to try selling freshly made snacks in the middle of the terminal? No, you are most likely going to buy one or buy four for the price of three and not worry about the cost whether you plan on keeping them all for yourself or giving some away. But the distinction is an important one. If you were a player in this scene, would you be stuck on the transaction, or would you be comfortable thinking beyond the transaction and sharing an unexpected kindness with three strangers? Your answer has implications beyond your pocketbook. As someone who works for herself, I have to ask every day "Is this activity bringing value?" If it's not, then I need to re-think it because I can't afford to engage in a lot of useless work. But the question becomes, "what is a valuable activity?" Is it something that I receive payment for or some other direct benefit? That's a transactional approach--I will do something because I see an immediate benefit or direct payoff. A lot of people operate that way, but I can't.  I believe in paying things forward and in sharing as much as I can.That's why if I have work that I think would benefit a larger audience, I put it online here or on my portfolio. It's why I'm active in LinkedIn groups and other places because I like keeping the information and resources flowing.   I've had people ask me in workshops if I worry about people "stealing" my work. Not at all. I believe that creativity is something that we should share with other people--it's energy that needs to keep moving and if we try to hold it to ourselves, then we will stifle our own ability to keep creating. I also believe that we each have gifts to give and that one of our goals as humans should be to find and share those gifts with other people. Whether I get something in return is immaterial. The nature of a gift is that there are no strings attached.  A few months ago, I wrote about the economic monoculture we are currently living in and how it pushes us to see human interactions through an economic, transactional prism. Everything we do is evaluated based on its "economic rationality," including it's ability to give us some direct benefit. I find this to be a soulless, sad way to live. Not that I can't get caught up in this thinking, but when I do, it's a quick trip into cynicism and unhappiness.  For me, what I do can't be about transactions. It's more about who and how I want to be in the world. Do I want to embody an ethos of "what's in it for me"?  Or do I want to be someone more generous and relational, someone who values other people simply for who they are not for what they can do for me?  I'm not sure where this post is taking me. Consider it a sort of meditation on the way I want to live my life. I aspire to be someone who goes beyond transactions, especially in my work.  I want to be the sort of person who gladly buys four caramel apples and gives three away in line to strangers in an airport, happy in the knowledge that I have put a gift out into the world and kept that spirit of generosity and creativity moving. 

Long hours. . .  are often more about proving something to ourselves than actually getting stuff done. --Jessica Stillman, Why Working More than 40 Hours a Week is Useless Over the past few years, I've come to realize that I have about 8-9 hours of work in me per day. That's it. Occasionally, if I'm really engrossed in a project, I can push for more, but usually I pay for that later with needing 4-5 hour work days that don't require a lot of mental energy.  There was a time when I felt like this was problematic. After all, I work for myself and true entrepreneurs are all about the 60 hour work weeks. Anything less suggests that you aren't that committed to your work. So I would dutifully sit at my desk for 10-12 hour stretches of time, feeling like anything less was "not being serious" about what I do. But here's the problem I observed--no matter how long I actually sat at my desk, I still didn't really do work past about 8 hours. The rest of my "work time" was largely swallowed up by mindless web surfing that always began as a "5-minute break" and ended two hours later with me wondering where the time had gone. It could also be chewed up in social conversations and shuffling of papers as I tried to figure out where I needed to go next.  What I came to realize is that working a 55+ week was really a myth. I wasn't doing it. I was just thinking that I was because it was important to my identity that I be seen as "hardworking," which I defined by the number of hours I sat at my desk. Somehow this made me feel important to always be able to report to people I was "busy," and "stressed" and "overworked."  In working with people on their career and professional development, I've seen that this issue of time--or more accurately our perception that we don't have enough of it --is one of the greatest barriers to growth and development. We have bought into the idea that our worth is measured by how many hours a day or a week we are "working," and because this notion is so important to us, we cling tightly to the fact that we are "too busy," without even looking at whether or not this is really true. Laura Vanderkam in a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal reminds us that how we spend our time is a choice and that saying we are "too busy" removes from us the burden of making those choices. When we are "too busy," we can act as though our time is something out of our control, rather than something we can choose to spend in different ways. Aside from asking us to look at how we are REALLY spending our time (a very worthwhile activity), she makes the case for us to change our language around time so that we better understand the choces we are making: Instead of saying "I don't have time" try saying "it's not a priority," and see how that feels. Often, that's a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don't want to. But other things are harder. Try it: "I'm not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it's not a priority." "I don't go to the doctor because my health is not a priority." If these phrases don't sit well, that's the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don't like how we're spending an hour, we can choose differently. To this list I would add, "I'm not going to spend time on figuring out what I want do to next because that's not a priority." Or "I'm not going to take an hour a day for my own growth and development because that's not a priority. Watching television is a bigger priority to me." When we say that we don't have time for our own growth and development, what we are really saying is that it's not a priority. We are choosing to spend time on other activities that somehow seem more important. That's OK, but we should be intentional about that, reminding ourselves that we are choosing one activity over another.  For me, what I've realized is that growth and development, time for personal projects and time with my family and friends are important to me--important enough for me to give up the ego stroke I used to get from perceiving myself as "hardworking," because I sat at my desk for 12 hours a day. It feels better to me to say that other things are on my priority list too. Some days I back slide. The culture of work as measured in hours is a hard one to resist. But most of the time I'm clear. And it feels a lot better than it did before.  So what are your priorities? How are you choosing to spend your time? 

Rosetta Thurman has long been one of my favorite bloggers--I've been reading her blog since she began in 2007. Today she has a 5-year anniversary post (Congrats, Rosetta!) that really resonated for me. It's about taking responsibility for what you love and what happens when you do: What I really want to say is that when you take responsibility for what you love and begin to show up with your unique gifts and talents, magic happens. People start to support you and help you in your quest to do meaningful work. You begin to see new possibilities for changing the world in your own way - whether that’s through writing or teaching or making art or feeding the homeless or taking care of babies or preserving the environment or making sure that we all have affordable healthcare. Here's what gets me about Rosetta's post. It's about taking responsibility for our passions and gifts. Do you hear that? Taking responsibility.  I've written before about the impact that our career stories and frames have on our thinking. For many of us, our passions and gifts are either completely unacknowledged (at worst) or we see them as being "impractical" and somehow less important. As a result, we will pay little attention to those gifts. We don't call attention to them or nurture them. If they somehow get in the way of the "real work," we will actively do what we can to shut them down. There's no room for them so we need to push them aside.  How would our thinking and approach to our gifts change if we saw ourselves as having a responsibility to bring them into the world, to nurture and grow them? What if I felt irresponsible when I pushed my gifts aside or did work that didn't make the most of what I bring to the world? What if my REAL responsibility wasn't to fit in to what everyone else wants from me, but to, instead, be clear about my own gifts and do what I could to nurture and express them? What a different world THAT might be. . .   Try an experiment. Ask yourself how your thinking about yourself shifts when you see yourself as taking responsible for your passions and gifts, really owning them. How would it change how you see yourself? What would you do differently? 

Long-time readers of this blog know that I am a fervent advocate of the "Act/Reflect" cycle of career and professional development. And I know that failure to deal with both sides of this equation is one of your surest routes to stuck.  Yesterday I stumbled across this article on the Harvard Business Review Blog on what to do when you don't know what to do. Boy, did it resonate! Career change is all about dealing with career uncertainty. We know we want something different, but we aren't sure what is going to happen if we pursue it. The future is a scary thing and standing still feels safer than moving if we aren't sure what will happen next.  Here's one thing I know for sure about standing still though. You don't actually get anywhere when you do that. If life is a journey (and I think it is), then standing still is the best way for you to miss what your life has to offer. At the end, all you'll be able to say is that you stood your ground.  So back to that HBR article, which points to a method for moving forward that will sound familiar if you've been playing along here on The Bamboo Project:  1. Start with desire. You find/think of something you want. You don't need a lot of passion, you only need sufficient desire to get started. ("I really want to start a restaurant, but I haven't a clue if I will ever be able to open one.") 2. Take a smart step as quickly as you can toward your goal. What's a smart step? It's one where you act quickly with the means at hand. What you know, who you know, and anything else that's available. ("I know a great chef, and if I beg all my family and friends to back me, I might have enough money to open a place.") You make sure that step is never going to cost more than it would be acceptable to you to lose should things not work out. And you bring others along to acquire more resources, spread the risk and confirm the quality of your idea. 3. Reflect and build on what you have learned from taking that step. You need to do that because every time you act, reality changes. Sometimes the step you take gets you nearer to what you want ("I should be able to afford something just outside of downtown"); sometimes what you want changes ("It looks likes there are an awful lot of Italian restaurants nearby. We are going to have to rethink our menu.") If you pay attention, you always learn something. So after you act, ask: Did those actions get you closer to your goal? ("Yes. It looks like I will be able to open a restaurant.") Do you need additional resources to draw even closer? ("Yes. I'll need to find another chef. The one I know can only do Italian.") Do you still want to obtain your objective? ("Yes.") 4. Repeat. Act. Learn. Build. Repeat. This is how successful serial entrepreneurs conquer uncertainty. What works for them will work for all of us. A couple of points. . .  First, notice that your desire doesn't have to be a burning passion. It just needs to be enough to get you moving. Quit spending time worrying about finding that EXACT THING that is going to be your be-all/end-all. Let curiosity be your guide. You need just enough desire to care to do something--and no more than that. Think of these steps as sparks that may or may not ignite a fire. Remember that you can't build a roaring blaze without igniting the kindling first.  That "smart step" you take--notice that you take it with what you have at hand. You don't wait until conditions are perfect or you have every possible bit of information. That's a good way to stand still. Work with what you have and see where that takes you. And notice that you should bring others along with you. That's a good role for your positive peer network.  Do not--DO NOT--skip the reflection step. You need it, to catch your breath and to figure out where to go next and how to get there. At the same time, don't get stuck there. Don't use it as an excuse to stop moving again. Make sure you go to step 4--the Repeat step.  Believe me, I get that careers are scary, uncertain things these days. But life is scary and uncertain. We can choose to meet it and move forward or we can sit down on the path and refuse to go anywhere. I vote for keeping it moving. . .   

For the past several months, I've been advising  the clients I work with to use a career journal to record and explore their ideas about the work they are doing, what inspires and drives them and what they want to experiment with in their work lives.  I've also been telling people to quit thinking and start doing--to experiment and then reflect on what happens. And then devise new experiments to keep moving forward.  Other advice I've given:  Use positive questions to explore what you want more of, rather than negative questions designed to "solve problems."  Seek out and nurture "the awesome". Make new connections and have new conversations as a way of fertilizing career seeds.  I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones that come to mind.  Last night, I was feeling a little adrift about where I want to go next--where to focus my attention. And I realized that all this advice I've been giving? I haven't been taking it myself. And (surprise!) now I'm feeling a little lost.  There's an adage in counseling that says that when you hear yourself giving advice to someone else, often that's the very advice you need to be taking yourself. Basically, physician, heal thyself.  So this blog post serves two purposes--one, to remind me that my career works best when I'm taking my own advice. And two, to remind you that when you hear yourself telling other people what to do, you might want to start asking if this is advice that you yourself should be taking. . .